Save it for when you need a little happiness, she had said, pressing the parcel into his hands. When there doesn’t seem to be any left on the horizon.

The horizon was nothing now but shards of moon-glow bobbing on the waves, sea ice piecing a silver world together from the endless black. His breath clouded in the silence, sinking around his boots with no breeze to unfurl it into wings.

The thin chimney of smoke from his cooking stove stretched straight up to where the moon wasn’t much more than a breath-smudge either, through the clouds. The catch that day had been good, strong, fat fish in those frigid waters, but happiness…even when the sun had been high, the ice bobbing blinding white on blue, he hadn’t seen any of it.

A fresh fillet of something that had fought his line just a few hours ago seared now in the pan, a sound that should have been homey, but in that place, any sound seemed just small. Floating in the centre of forever, forever to a warm touch or the sound of another human voice in every direction.

So he tore open that packet at last, and let its powdery contents pour into the pan. The searing changed in pitch, fresh and hungry, and the smell…

The smell was home. Peppery, savoury, her, and the smoke stung tears to his eyes even as it wiped them from his cheeks. The smell was happiness, and in a voice rusted over by weeks out of use, he whispered her name and thanks while the smoke carried up home to cloud with the breath of the moon.